Introduction

The water was dark with a wavering luminance that gave the mountains and valleys a sombre polish. The moon's lustre quivered in the chilled dark whispers that pulsed through her, bedimmed in the trembling surface as the rain poured down. The cold was what made her feel alive, like arctic silk shivering across her skin.

She had been born to the water, her and her sisters, weaving fins with rhythmic ease through torrents, dancing over bowing trenches until the morning red-painted sky slowly convoluted itself into a fiery painting that chilled into purples and blues. She raced up to the surface and broke through, feeling the delicate breeze scent her breast as her arch lifted her over the morning's water skin, her sisters joining her saltation. She dives back under the waves, feeling the current caress her body as she coiled her body into a riptide, feeling it nestle her gently into its care, lifting her to her favourite stone hedge.

The reef would shimmer under the glass curls, hypnotic colours crystalized as it stretched up to the sun. She watched as fish came out and circled the reef, nibbling. She would sit here with her sisters, talking with her sisters, laughing as the waves licked their tails.

This was her home, had been. With every pitch, her heart lurched, to be so close, to taste and smell the salt, to feel the sun that peaked through the crate. The single ray in the dimed cloth over hot metal. She'd only known metal from the wreckage of her sisters, chains, boxes, and spikes in rotten wood, but this metal was black, not green.

Nets were cast, ripping her from her precious sea. She cried out to them, screamed down to them, but without the moon, there was no song. She twisted and writhed, screeching, slashing her sharp fins at the rope, but as her body crashed against the hull hands grabbed her. Her arms were tied against the net, her tail, as her scales began to drip dry in the hot sun. Her sisters screamed, thrashing their bodies against the ship, three more nets were cast.

Oh, my sisters, my home!